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"TUB MODKL ADMINISTRATION." 



AN 



ORATION, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



WHIG CITIZENS OF PHILADELPHIA, 



THE TWENTY-SECOND OP FEBRUARY, J844. 



BY WILLIAM B. REED, 



PHILADELPHIA.: 

J. CRISSY, PRINTER, N" V 4 MINOR STREET. 



"THE MODEL ADMINISTRATION." 



AN 



ORATION, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



WHIG CITIZENS OF PHILADELPHIA, 



THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY, 1S14. 



BY WILLIAM B. REED. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. CRISSY, PRINTER, NO. 4 MINOR STREET. 
1844. 



November 29, 1843. 

"Resolved, That the Whigs of Philadelphia will celebrate, 
in an appropriate manner, the approaching anniversary of the 
Birth of Washington; and that it be recommended to the 
Whigs of the Nation to unite in a simultaneous celebration 
throughout the land, so as to exhibit their veneration for a 
character which time and contrast make more venerable, and 
their fidelity to principles, which, as professed and practised 
by Washington, we and our Candidate are proud to call our 
own." \ 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens: 

If you expect to hear from my lips a party speech, you will 
go hence disappointed. The day we have met to celebrate is 
one of the Nation's holy days, when every man, the ordinary 
political contests of the day sinking to repose, stands side by 
side with his American brother around the honored grave of 
the Father of his country, and meditates in reverence of his 
great example. 

And yet the question has been asked ; and the question must 
be answered, why, as a Party, we have here assembled. The 
simple reason is, that the principles of Washington are the prin- 
ciples of the Whigs. His policy of government, his theory of 
the constitution are ours, and while new theories, new anniver- 
saries, new men, are the objects of admiration elsewhere, we 
are not ashamed to think or say that we know of no one who 
can share the superstitious reverence which our childhood 
learned and which our manhood is not too proud to practice. 
And now, when hope so long deferred, is dawning brightly on 
the people's mind, that years of misgovernment are nearly over, 
government adminrstered on principles at variance from those 
which guided the administration of the first and greatest Presi- 



dent, there is mingled a confident assurance that the candidate 
of the Whigs, towards whom the affections of the Nation are 
now directed with an intensity without a parallel, sympathising 
with us, will make Washington's administration the model of 
his own. 

What then were Washington's conduct and administration, 
what his policy of government, what his view of the consti- 
tution? Will you have patience, my Whig friends, while I 
tell you 1 And if I succeed in the object I have in view, in 
bringing to your mind, as matter of conviction, and abiding po- 
litical faith, that he and his friends, those illustrious men, whose 
counsel he received and yet scrutinized with the discrimination 
of his manly intellect, best understood and administered the 
government which they had created, and that even now, after 
the lapse of time and change of minor circumstances, we can 
have no better guides than they were, I shall have my exceed- 
ing great reward. I shall more than ever be proud of any 
agency I have had, however humble, in bearing testimony to 
our fidelity, the fidelity of the Whigs of Philadelphia, where the 
best part of Washington's public life was passed, to his princi- 
ples, and reverence of his example. 

It is now exactly seventy years since Washington as a public 
man first came to this city, to attend, as a Delegate from Vir- 
ginia, the first Continental Congress. The building yet stands, 
appropriated to other and far humbler uses, where this great 
council, the Mother-Council of the Nation, met. Its history is 
part of our classic annals. Its purpose was deliberation, re- 
monstrance, supplication. An appeal, firmly and affectionately 
made, in behalf of an injured people. But it was more than 
this. It revealed the truth that the American colonies, separa- 
ted by habit, associations, religion, every thing but language 



and common suffering, were fit to be one United Nation. And 
it was by the cradle of the Union that Washington was found. 

Less than a year rolls by, and again the Council of the Na- 
tion has been convoked. The armed hand of the oppressor is 
on this people. Blood had been shed. There was a voice call- 
ing for vengeance from the earth ; but it was the cry not of the 
brother's but of the child's blood, praying for vengeance on a 
cruel parent. Lexington and Concord, unknown and humble 
spots, had become immortal, and Colonial America sprang into 
existence, an armed and in fact an independent nation. Then, 
too, HE was here, and here in Philadelphia it was that Wash- 
ington was taken from Virginia and given to America. It was 
here, almost within trumpet sound of this spot, that he was 
made Commander in Chief of the volunteer armies of the nation, 
and that the covenant was sealed which secured to us and to all 
future ages the inheritance of his fame. 

Thus was Washington the first-born child of the social union. 
He was made the leader of America's armies, by a choice that 
was unanimous. Of the forty-eight individuals who cast their 
votes for Washington, forty had known him long and well — had 
known him in the first Congress where strangers looked on each 
other's faces for the first time, and formed their estimates of 
character by slow and deliberate judgment. He went to the 
camp at Cambridge, a stranger, to exercise new and unwonted 
authority, and to make the fearful experiment of subjecting a 
rude peasantry to the strict control of military discipline. And 
yet it was accomplished. And from every nook and corner of 
New England there went forth a voice of gratitude and praise 
to him, the Southern soldier, who had come from a distance to 
their rescue, who for their sake had left his hearth and family 



8 

defenceless, and who never quitted his post while danger threat- 
ened. And Washington's last and earnest prayer when he left 
New England, was a prayer for peace, for liberty, for union: — 

"May that Being who is powerful to save — in whose hands 
is the fate of Nations, look down with pity and compassion 
upon the whole of these United Colonies. May he continue to 
smile on their counsels and arms, and crown them with success 
whilst employed in the cause of virtue and mankind. May this 
afflicted colony, and every part of this extended continent, 
through his Divine favor, be restored to their former lustre, and 
once happy state, and have peace, liberty, and safety secured 
to them forever." 

Virginia and Massachusetts! the ancient States — the Mother 
Colonies. You stood shoulder to shoulder through the Revolu- 
tion. It was for you this prayer was uttered, it was for you 
the blessing of union and sympathy was invoked. It was a 
prayer from a man of the true stature of Virginia's sons — a 
man of her ancient days. It came from a heart that knew 
no selfish aspiration or unholy communion ; from a mind, 
perplexed with no poor scruples and infirm and faultering 
purposes — misled by no misty abstractions or metaphysical 
fumes generated in schools of political necromancy — a man 
of the olden and the better times, who, in the quaint lan- 
guage of the ancient chronicle, "never had miscreant about 
him." It was a prayer for his country, not suflfering, as it 
now suffers, under the whip of misgovernment, but the scor- 
pions of intolerable tyranny — not wasted by atrophy, but 
racked by fierce convulsions. Not shadowed by a passing 
cloud, but darkened by gloom that knew no sunlight. It 
was Washington's prayer for the whole land. It was a prayer 



to avert disunion, let it come from what source, let it be stimu- 
lated by what motive it may. It was a prayer which we may 
humbly trust a merciful Providence has been pleased to listen to. 
And who shall say we do not need this interceding influence 
to guard the Institutions of our land, who will say that the 
hour of danger has passed away, who will venture to affirm 
when voices of disaffection in high places are heard all around 
us, that the trial of American faith is over. Are there not while 
I speak, elements of fierce combustion swelling and heaving the 
ground beneath our feet? The pure, spirit like flame of loyalty 
to the State, of true love for the institutions under which we 
live, begins to pale its ineffectual fire in the ghastly glare of 
fierce fanaticism. Not only is the genius of revolution exerci- 
sing its sway on the moss-covered institutions of the old world, 
but a subtle and busy demon, the bastard progeny of one of the 
parents of all revolution, is at work to pick out the cement of 
aflfection which binds this Union together. We hear of disunion 
as the least of evils, we listen to plans of new confederacies, the 
South, the West and the North, separating in order to trade 
against each other. We are beginning to learn that fidelity to 
the common State is a secondary duty, and love to our distant 
fellow citizen no duty at all — and when the full fruition of these 
doctrines is attained, when the hour arrives in which the value 
of the Union is to be seriously calculated — when the balance is 
to be struck between what will be called romantic notions of 
allegiance, and substantial items of profit and loss and dogmas 
of transcendental morality — when the holiest of early associa- 
tions and the purest of affections, the love of country and the 
reverence of ancestry are to be weighed in the scale against 
American utilitarianism and American ultraism, it will be too 
late to talk of our common legacy. But the time has not come. 



10 

The prayer of Washington is heard. The sympathies of re- 
publican America are yet active. The heart of the South is not 
yet ossified by the pestilent doctrine, that what is profitable is 
right. The Northern heart, we know, beats true to its allegi- 
ance — true to a brother's love. 

And at the end of seven long years, years of unceasing care 
and anxiety, of self-control and heroic self-reliance, the war of 
the Revolution was over, and Washington restored to those 
who had given them, his rank and military authority. No sin- 
gle act throughout his whole career beyond or above the laws, 
whilst laws existed, disfigured his military conduct. He inva- 
ded the rights of no citizen, trampled on no privilege, and, even 
in the fierce convulsion of a civil war, when law was silent, he 
sustained the high distinction of being the only revolutionary 
leader the world has ever seen who never wilfully violated a 
private right. At Cambridge, Washington had invoked the 
blessing of Heaven on the struggling liberties of his country — 
at Annapolis, when the war was over, he sought the same bless- 
ing in their hour of triumph. " I close," were his earnest 
words, "this solemn act of my official life by commending the 
interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty 
God, and those who have the superintendence of them to his 
holy keeping. Having now finished the work assigned to me I 
retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an aflfec- 
tionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have 
so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of 
all the employments of public life." 

But short was the repose which Washington enjoyed. The 
Nation had a still higher trust to delegate. There were trials 
to be endured greater than any that actual war had inflicted. 
The experiment was yet to be made whether a people which 



11 

had fought its way to freedom had the capacity to govern itself 
and to rescue itself from impending anarchy. In this trial the 
conservative influence of Washington was again needed and 
exerted. 

We are too much in the habit of looking on the War of the 
Revolution as the only test of our country's virtue and capa- 
bility. Far, very far is this from being so. The scene which 
was exhibited when the war was over and the presence of a for- 
eign enemy was removed, had equal if not greater perils. There 
was no sufficient union — no national authority, no common gov- 
ernment, and the disorganized masses of the State governments 
bursting from the moorings of a feeble confederacy, were rush- 
ing wildly about. There was no currency. There was no 
trade. There was no sure domestic industry, and what was 
called a government, was in Washington's own words " a half- 
starved, limping sovereignty, moving on crutches and tottering 
at every step." For four years did this continue, and there 
was not a day in those long years, when the mind of Washing- 
ton, rusting in no poor repose, was not turned to the one thought 
of the peaceful Revolution then in progress. The military sym- 
pathy which the war had generated was supplanted by new 
anxiety and new affections. His fellow soldiers were dropping 
one by one into their early graves. In a letter written in '86 
to Mr. Jefferson, the heart of Washington is poured out in tones 
of touching, melancholy eloquence. " The pillars of the Revo- 
lution are falling all around me. Others are mouldering by 
sure though insensible decay. May our country never want 
props to support the glorious fabric." 

The craving of his mighty mind was not disappointed. The 
forebodings of his darkened spirit, darkened by shadows of the 
past and the clouds of the future, were dissipated, and our city, 



12 

Philadelphia, where war was declared, Independence proclaim- 
ed, and Washington commissioned, saw, with grateful joy, the 
meeting of a new and mightier conclave, which, with Washing- 
ton for the leader of its peaceful counsels, was to secure the 
uncertain destinies of the country, and create the Union "now 
and forever, one and inseparable." Washington was President 
of the Convention which formed the Federal Constitution. 

In his Journal he tells us that " Christ church bells were 
chimed when he entered the city." They, the ancient voices of 
our city's heart, rang out a peal of new welcome to him who 
now was coming as a man of peace on a peaceful ministry. On 
the next day the Convention met and after four months' secret 
session, gave to the world the Constitution under which we 
live. It was no Ill-assorted fabric, hastily raised for tempo- 
rary protection amidst the conflict of civil war, it was no Peti- 
tion of Right thrust at the point of the sword on an unwilling 
master, it was no Solemn League and Covenant bearing the 
traces of the rugged feelings which gave it being, it was the re- 
sult of mature and deliberate counsel whither each master 
mind brought the labors of meditation on the great truths of 
civil liberty, which were evolved from the history of the civili- 
sed world. It was a structure " built of stone ready made 
before it was brought thither, so that there was neither hammer, 
nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house whilst it was 
building." And when it was complete, the modest diary of 
Washington tells us, that having received the papers from the 
Secretary of the Convention, he retired to '^meditate on the 
momentous work that had been accomplished." 

My friends and fellow citizens, you whose memories extend 
only over a peaceful retrospect, you who live in times of secu- 
rity and prosperity, whose slumbers have never been disturbed 



13 

by substantial fears for to-morrow, who only think of the Con- 
stitution as a subject of exhausted criticism, in and out of the 
councils of the Nation, come with me if you can, to the solitary 
chamber, where Washington is meditating. Fancy if you can, 
the thoughts, the hopes and fears, which under that calm exte- 
rior, were agitating his well balanced mind. He thought of it 
as a great Charter, which, if worth preserving, time and age 
would consecrate. He thought of it as a great instrument of 
practical beneficence to be interpreted in a spirit of generous 
benevolence. He did not study it as the sceptic studies the 
Bible to doubt and to cavil, and generally for his own poor 
purposes, as the phrase is, to constme it strictly. He knew what 
the people needed, and he best knew that they meant the Na- 
tions constitution to be no barren negation, no fruitless denial, 
but a creation of fair proportions and abundant practical effi- 
cacy, the fruit of that delegation of authority which it was 
hoped would return in generous bounty on the heads of those 
who gave it, and make this not only an united but a prosperous 
nation. 

And when at the last call of the Nation thus created, Wash- 
ington became its first Constitutional President, so he adminis- 
tered it; he made the country /eeZ it had a Constitution worth 
all the blood of the Revolution, worth their love, worth their 

instinctive reverence. 

And by whose agency did he administer the government? 
Who were the counsellors whom Washington called to his as- 
sistance ? Hamilton and Knox, Jefferson and Randolph, the 
statesmen and soldiers whom the Revolution knew, the leader 
of the Revolution now selected. He chose them for their well- 
tried patriotism and merit, without a thought of personal ag- 
grandizement or political advancement. He selected them for 



14 

the public service they could render. He did not huckster the 
high patronage of office. He did not invite competition of needy 
party rivals, ready for any sacrifice for the ?ake of place. He 
did not bestow the honors of the nation to the lowest bidder.* 
He was the victim of no irresponsible cabal, but the fellow 
counsellor with the wise and virtuous, the master of his own 
conscience, the resolute but modest guide of his own public 
conduct. No pestilent nepotism obscured his mental or his moral 
vision. No imbecile affection for family connexions perplexed 
his sober judgment. Had he not been childless he would still 
have been the Father of his country. 

And his measures ! They were conceived in the spirit of the 
widest beneficence, and have left in the Legislation of the coun- 
try, traces which can never be effaced. 

The great policy of protecting Domestic Industry had its 
origin with the Washington administration, and the Tariff sys- 
tem which is now made the subject of so much inconsiderate 
hostility, but which is interwoven with the affections of the 
American People, was sanctioned as constitutional and expedi- 
ent by Washington himself. A protective Tariff was the second 
statute enacted by the Congress of 1789. The new light which 
bewilders contemporary statesmen, who see no authority in the 
Constitution for the exercise of this sacred right of self-defence, 
had not shone on his mind. He knew that in the deliberations 



♦On 24th May 1791, Washington wrote as follows to Charles Cotesworth Pinck- 
ney and Edward Rutledge — " Gentlemen. An address to you jointly on a subject of 
the following nature, may have a singular appearance, but the singularity will not 
exceed the evidence which is thereby given of my opinion of and confidence in you, 
and of the opinion I entertain of your confidence and friendship for each other. A 
place in the Supreme Court of the Union remains to be filled. Will either of you 
two gentlemen accept iti And in that case which of you 1" — In a joint reply Mr. 
Rutledge and Mr. Pinckney dechned the appointment, and it was conferred on 
Thomas Johnson, of Maryland. 



15 

of the Convention a doubt of this had never been whispered, 
and approving " alike of the principles and details " of the first 
Tariff law, he proclaimed his sanction of a system which it has 
been reserved for later times, to assail and discredit. The great 
measure of defensive policy thus sanctioned, was matured for 
the avowed purpose of " encouraging and protecting manufac- 
tures." And let this too be remembered, the Tariff which Wash- 
ington approved, was mainly the work of a Pennsylvania Rep- 
resentative, an enlightened Philadelphia merchant.* 

Washington asserted the constitutional powers of the Fede- 
ral Government to regulate the currency, and give certain and 
fixed equivalents throughout the land to honest industry. He 
had seen and known the curse of an irredeemable government 
circulation. He had, throughout the war, and when the war 
was over, suffered under the Continental Paper Money. He 
believed the States, themselves, animated by local rivalry and 
sectional jealously, would not and could not, permanently, 
regulate and adjust the nicest of all economical machinery, 
that which creates the currrency of an extensive nation ; and 
after deliberation, w^hich showed the depth of his solicitude ; 
after manly consultation with his constitutional advisers, he 
signed the first National Bank Bill, and gave to the people 
that steady security which, while it existed, never had an equal 
in the financial history of the world. 

Nor were these the only great measures of Washington's 
policy. In the mind of his Financial Minister, a mind which, it 
has been beautifully said, was " as radiant with intelligence as 



♦ Thomas Fit zsimmons, a Representative from the city of Philadelphia on the 9th 
of April 17S9, moved to add to the enumerated articles of import subject to specific 
duties, giving as his reason, " the necessity of encouraging the productions of the 
country, and protecting our infant mauiufactures." 



16 

the firmament with stars," was conceived the great project g£ 
restoring the National credit by an assumption of the debts of 
the States. There it was elaborated and matured, and when 
submitted to the people, it too had the sanction of Washing- 
ton's authority. The war of the Revolution had left the States 
involved in hopeless bankruptcy, overwhelmed with debts 
incurred for the common welfare, and stripped by the Consti- 
tution of the only easy mode of raising revenue. That word of 
infamy, the last coinage of insolent iniquity, repudiation, had 
no existence then — but the willingness to pay an honest debt 
was mocked by actual destitution. The tax gatherer could 
glean nothing from fields wasted by long and bloody war. The 
thoughts of Washington and his advisers were turned to the 
freshly written words of the Constitution, and there they found 
no denial of a power in the General Government to interpose 
its means of beneficence and make the debts of the States it» 
own. There are those who can recollect, history tells to us 
who are younger, what was the effect of this measure of relief. 
American credit, the combined credit of the Nation and the 
States was restored or created. Capital and wealth were called 
from the grave where they were buried, and a thrill of invigo- 
rating gratitude and joy animated the hearts of thousands who, 
through public bankruptcy, looked forward to the doom of cer- 
tain, desperate poverty. 

But, my friends and fellow-countrymen, fellow-citizens of 
Pennsylvania, misunderstand me not. Our dishonor — that • 
which makes us blush before the world — that which makes us 
silent under the sharpest sarcasm, the public bankruptcy of this 
day, can fairly look to no such relief The duty of self-reliance 
has not yet been performed. This is not the day which suc- 
ceeds that of actual war. Ours is not hopeless, but it is wilful 



17 

bankruptcy, and we have no right to call for aid till we have 
done our duty. To ask for relief now, before we make the 
resolute effort of honest men to extricate the Commonwealth 
from its present calamity, and while plenty and prosperity 
in rich abundance are all around us, will be to make a 
confession from which the pride of Pennsylvania, in its honora- 
ble instincts, revolts. I, for one, am not prepared yet to do it. 
I am too proud of the soil that gave me being, whose his- 
tory in her day of real calamity, in the dark hours of the 
Revolution, and amid the horrors of civil war, every Pennsyl- 
vanian has studied with honest pride, to despair of the Re- 
public, its integrity and faith. But should the hour of de- 
spair arrive — should the pervisity of public councils or of the 
popular mind force upon us the conviction that nothing will be 
done for ourselves, by ourselves — should the pestilent dogma 
which distinguishes public from private morality prevail, and 
the mournful truth force itself on the mind, that nothing will be 
done at home, then, but not till then, let us remember that there 
is a paternal, beneficent government to which we can look in 
our hour of desperate shame, and that Washington himself has 
sanctioned its interposition to save us from the deep disgrace of 
being a nation of sharpers. 

Fellow-citizens, I have no sensibility, no true-hearted man 
can have, to threats of foreign aggression or forcible retaliation, 
even for admitted wrong. It is not the sneer of ribald elo- 
quence from abroad which wounds my heart. The time has 
been when bright shafts from the same rich quiver have been shot 
across the Atlantic, and fallen harmless, at our feet ; but then we 
were clothed in the bright armour of invulnerable virtue and 
integrity, and defied the point which national antipathy turned 
against us. Now, alas ! it is the sense of doing wrong which 
3 



18 

enfeebles our arm, and leaves us exposed to wounds from hands 
which once we scorned. There is not a breeze that comes 
across the ocean which is not freighted with the cries of widows 
and of orphans, complaining of the wrongs we have done to 
them, and there is an echo here at home, from sufferers amongst 
ourselves, which swells the bitter chorus of complaint, which 
is sounding throughout the world at our neglect to do a simple 
duty. 

It was but yesterday — pardon me, my friends, for dwelling 
on thoughts of self-reproach — that on the floor of Congress, 
its venerable patriarch, the illustrious man whose birth was 
coeval with the birth of this nation, and who now survives the 
last bright link which binds the age of the Revolution to our 
own, spoke of Pennsylvania with melancholy eloquence, as of 
that ancient Commonwealth, whose proud motto once was, 
" Virtue, Liberty and Independence." And no one Representa- 
tive of Pennsylvania could venture to say, that the rebuke and 
lamentation were unjust. 

Oh ! my friends and fellow-citizens, you, who think as I 
do ; who mourn as every honest man must mourn over the 
degradation we endure, I call on you, (and I wish my feeble 
voice could reach to every corner of this great Commonwealth.) 
on this sacred day, on this anniversary of the birth of one who 
never broke faith with man ;* whose highest attributes were 
those of justice, to unite in all and every effort, on all occasions, 
with and without party organization, to remove the load 
of shame and obloquy which now weighs us to the earth. The 



♦ In 1774, Washington refused to sanction a non-exportation agreement, because 
it prevented the colonies from paying their just debts abroad. In his honest judg- 
ment, no oppression could justify dishonor. 



19 

inheritance of our fathers, the pride of ancestry, the associa- 
tions of history, the memory of Washington and those immor- 
tal names which brightened the firmament when we dared look 
upward, are worthless now, and will be worthless as subjects 
of pride and exultation, till public faith be restored and the 
public word of honour be redeemed. 

I have spoken of that venerable man who yet survives in the 
full vigour of his gigantic mind, and whose presence amongst 
us on this day we hoped to have. 

Had he come, how proud a w^elcome, on such an anniversary, 
would the Whigs of Philadelphia have given him. We would 
have honored him for his own sake ; we would have honored 
him for his father's sake. Here to Philadelphia we should have 
gladly bade him welcome, here where the trumpet-tongue of 
eloquence proclaimed Independence before the pledge of mutual 
fidelity was written w^hich bound all to common danger. It was 
John Adams, who, here in Philadelphia, walking in the State 
House Yard, first named Washington as the Commander-in- 
Chief of the Army of the Revolution. It was John Adams who 
made John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. It 
was John Quincy Adams, of whom, exactly half a century ago, 
Washington said, " He must not think of retiring from public 
life. His prospects are too fair, and I shall be much mistaken 
if, in the course of time, he be not at the head of our Diploma- 
tic corps, let the Government be administered by whomsoever 
the people may choose.* It was John Quincy Adams whom 
Washington thus honored, who when he occupied the place 
•which Washington once held, disregarding the clamour of foul 
and malignant calumny, and trusting to the slow but certain jus- 

* See also XI Washington's Writings, 188. 



20 

tice which time would render, made Henry Clay his Secretary 
of State. 

And that slow but certain justice — that compensation which 
even in this world virtue commands, has been made. There is 
a generous impulse to the heart of the people which cannot 
always be abused, and by one of those coincidences which seem 
too picturesque to be accidental, we have seen, almost at the 
same moment, the Congress of the Union solacing the last 
hours of an old soldier by an act too amiable to be cavil- 
led at, and the Legislature of a sovereign State, and that 
state, the state of General Jackson's extremest popularity, 
voluntarily acknowledging an ancient error, retracting an un- 
just accusation, and doing frank and generous justice to those 
illustrious men, whom, of all living men, this Nation now has 
greatest reason to be proud of* 

And now, Fellow-citizens, I feel your patience must be nearly 
exhausted. And yet I feel how little justice I have done to you, 
to myself, to the great theme which the associations of the day 
afford. 

I meant to tell you what the example and administration of 
Washington were. 

I meant to shadow forth what, in the certain and early future, 
those who worship at the shrine of Washington have a right to 
look for. 

One word sums it ail. His was a generous administration. 
Its attribute was beneficence. The Constitution, by his inter- 
pretation, was a great engine of great good. It fostered and 



♦ The Act of Congress refunding General Jackson's fine, and the Resolutions of 
the Legislature of Tennessee, rescinding the censure which, nearly twenty years ago, 
was passed in relation to Mr. Clay's appointment by Mr. Adams, as Secretary of 
State. 



21 

protected all parts of the Nation, secured equal rights and 
guarded every interest. The Judiciary, the Navy, the Cur- 
rency, the Tariff, the Public Credit, all prostrate when he 
assumed his great public trust were established in definite form 
and influence before he relinquished it. And down to this 
hour the Institutions of the country bear the impress of his 
mighty mind, so deeply marked that time and error, abuse of 
public office and transient perversity of the popular mind can- 
not obliterate it. 

Nearly half a century has passed since, here in Philadel- 
phia, on the floor of Congress, John Marshall announced the 
death of Washington. His words, dictated by all the warmth 
of deep reverence and affection, are yet in our memories. 

"Let us pay the last tribute of respect to our departed friend. 
Let the grand council of the Nation display the sentiments the 
Nation feels. However public confidence may change, and 
public affections fluctuate as to others, with respect to him, in 
war and in peace, in public and private life, they have been as 
steady as his own firm mind, and constant as his own exalted 
virtues." 

And his memory cherished yet in the Nation's heart, has its 
protecting influence, its influence for good, for encouragement 
and consolation ; consolation for the immediate past and pre- 
sent — encouragement to wait for the coming of the bright day 
which is dawning on an abused and disappointed people. The 
principles of generous statesmanship, the benign interpretation 
of the Constitution, the influence of patriotic example, the force 
of personal character, chastened and invigorated through a long 
career of public service — these, realized in our candidate, are 
the anticipations which brighten our day of hope and confident 
reliance. Of the cold and cheerless contrast, this is not the time 



22 

to speak. This is not the occasion, when thoughts of such a 
contrast can find utterance. Gratitude and hope are beating in 
our hearts. The words of cheerful praise of the living, and 
veneration for the illustrious dead, alone are on our lips. And 
when the fulness of that day does come — when the hopes of the 
Nation are realized — when He, towards whom the heart of the 
people yearns, and to whom our best, truest, most resolute 
devotion is now pledged, shall assume the position to which a 
grateful people call him, let him look steadily to the example 
of the first and greatest President as his best and surest guide, 
and when history shall write its final record, let the truth be 
there inscribed, that Henry Clay made Washington's adminis- 
tration the model of his own, and that the principles of Wash- 
ington are the principles of the Whigs. 



W84 










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